Category: GHANA

It is a fact that culture is heavily dependent on language. If we lose our language which is a core part of our identity, then we lose our culture. Language must not be taken for granted neither must it be heavily adulterated. Some countries like Korea, China, Russia but to mention a few, have been able to break to maintain their languages nationally and internationally. A developing country like ours need to take steps in ensuring that we get there one day. It is in view of this that the Bureau of Ghana Languages, Tamale, is organising a public lecture on Friday, November 20, 2015 on the following topics

The use of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction in our lower primary schools; merits and demerits.

The school system in Ghana, to me, is flawed in many ways. So much that many teachers find themselves in weird situations which make no sense and it leaves me wondering. The code of conduct of the Ghana Education Service (GES) is, to me, not clear and does not cover many areas which wake to bite eventually. We talk of the use of mobile phones and GES does not permit its usage but children have smart phones they use crude methods in charging and it is now something no teacher can have control over.

The issue of girls barbering their hair in senior high schools, to me, does not make sense. I know there are reasons like; they needing to study, making them disrespectful, making them attract men etc. I know that many girls in private senior high schools with plaited hair are doing fine. Why must they be made to be conscious of their hair to a point of creating chaos?

As a teacher, I marvel at the trouble surrounding the hair of female students. A girl who plaited her hair and covered it with a scarf saw the senior housemistress and decided to faint for fear of being penalized. So she feigned collapse, was sent to the hospital and later told her friends she did that for fear of being punished. All that drama is not worth it.

I could say students should be “deponked” as some say but that option is not advisable in some schools. Here in northern Ghana, there is a spiritual sickness called “genes”. When they get attacked by these spirits, they go as far as threatening to kill others, harming themselves, physically assaulting others, running around like the mentally challenged etc. This spiritual sickness is known to be sparked by the touch of their hair by others. They believe these spirits must be appeased; some rituals need to be performed before one touches their hair so imagine what will happen if you touch their hair? And don’t say it is preposterous, even very respectable men pay attention to the girls “possessed by genes”.

I think it is time the Ghana Education Service allow girls to plait their hair instead of making them cut. It does not make sense that the hair of students cause so much attention and makes a national headlines.

With the case of a teacher barring students from writing their final exams because of their bushy hair, we have to think about it in many ways. Many are those who will jump into conclusion and condemn the teacher but there is more to this than meets the eye. I must say that some teachers are paranoid, they are humans and are fallible, some are simply too passionate and become emotional thinking in immaturity that their goal is to discipline so go overboard. These teachers need time to learn from their mistakes and the mistakes of others. The children who were quick to run to the media house just wanted to breed trouble. They could have reported to the administration, and there is the evidence that the teacher involved wanted to just scare them, those who remained were allowed to write their examination. That brings us to the question, is the media fuelling disrespect among children?

I think we have come far, too far that children now see themselves as adults with rights, well rights they have and rights they don’t have. The earlier we think of ways of eliminating issues which can grow to bite, the better for us. I call on GES to revise its code of conduct and clearly state what to do and what not to do to prevent teachers from making fools out of themselves. The elders say “advise the cat but advise the stinking meat too” I wish teachers will know that teaching is patience, we need patience in order to take care of our own children, so of course we need more patience to handle children of others. Whatever we do, we must think of the issue broadly before acting. Anyone who succeeds in life needs to thank one teacher or the other but teachers who victimize eventually become the villains.

Thoughts soo advanced
Have descended the stairs of the earth
Hands so talented lay still
Refusing to move, even when danger announces its coming
Theodosia Oko!

II
She married the colours
Red, gold, green with a black star
Mating the gold
And gave perfect meanings
As to why it must flag the Ghana land
But her red now turns blood
Blood not of our forefathers
Blood of hers stopping in her veinly tracks
Yellow turns to her sunset
Instead of our minerals
Green turns to her veins’ poisoning instead of our vegetation
As the black star shows
Her breath gave up hope on her body
And is leading her beyond

III
A feat for a lady
Whose worth was then in the kitchen
If Yaa Asantewaa was hailed as gallant
You are being hailed for your talent
For your intelligence
For your creativity
And for being the perfect messenger of our forefathers

IV
Your footsteps shake our ground now,
Although you lived to the fullest,
But when it enters the gates of the heavens
We shall sing praises
For being blessed with a blessing like you

V
I hope the blood of our forefathers stop tearing
And our green vegetation feed, clothe and bring in income
While the minerals show our wealth
Making us work harder to win their trust
As the star of hope turns to a star of fulfillment

V
Sleep not, wise one
As you join those who toiled
Rest not, creative one
Tell it all to them
And let all ‘dum’ be ‘s)’
Let all long hands stealing from the nation’s coffers be caught
Let all treasoners of the nation repent and confess
Before your buttocks grace the sofas of our forefathers in rest
Mama Theo, Go in Peace
Mama Theo, ‘Yaa w) Ojogbaan’
Amoafowaa Sefa Cecilia (c) 2015

“Akosua is a ‘kosua’ A ‘kosua’ which needs a holder A holder with veins feared by the earth But she fears palms”

***Really?

*** Oh elders like shelvers! Elders with clippers! Elders with machete tongues! ‘Odomankoma Ahunu Abobirim’ is a generous God So generous as to make Akosua legs, hands, a head and brain Why will she act like an egg wasting those?

*** I say this to you; Eggs do break Sometimes with a little shake Some do bake Some are fried And they are eaten, forgotten, and another sought

*** She is a queen Needed to be respected by a king Not a thing to be eaten Nor a thing to nurse to birth Only to be reared and killed

*** So don’t shelve her Take away her cages And concentrate on the tickings of your clocks

*** Maybe empowerment will make her; Your legs, when they wobble Your hands, when they struggle Your eyes, when they blur Putting stomach sustainables where they need to be

*** So Akosua is a queen Akosua is strong Akosua is not a thing From the anus or with an anus of a delicacy! Amoafowaa Sefa Cecilia (c) 2015

Gone are the days
When Ghanaian children feared ‘kakai’
Now only villagers, coastal children and children with naturalistic parents get to bath in natural waters
What was a swimming pool then?
An anachronistic thought

II
Now, ‘mpotompoto’ and ‘coco’
Are for the villagers and children with grand mothers
Ei! With the lac lac lac in milk and sugar
Abound on the market
Who wants to be primitive?
I shake my head

III
Even watching the stars at night
Counting them in childlikeness
Running in hide and seek
All are swiped by ‘Kojo-Televisin’
And its game friends

IV
When teenagers took runs
As they went to the streams
Fetching and helping each other to carry their pots
Oh, that too is gone with the emergence of ‘Ama-pipe’

(This poem is for all those women who think themselves superior to men. Be yourself, love yourself, fight for respect with hard work and good deeds but never think of disrespecting men, they too are humans, humans we deliver and so must cherish)

(Today is World Poetry Day. Let me start my day with a walk with my president. I love and respect the headship because he represents Ghana, my motherland. When things go wrong, writers have the pens. And this is how I choose to use mine today)

Yesterday, a father I cherish, nominated me to say five things I love about Ghana, my homeland. Due to the advantaged peace of “dumsor” I was not able to take on the challenge to the fullest, and I decided to take that up today.

1. I love Ghana because we are hospitable. Yes, we are hospitable, in that, many are those who will rush to help the helpless in all situations, except of course where ebola is concerned. Let someone collapse on the street, and you’ll get many offering to take that person to the hospital, let some people decide to fight, and you’ll get others trying to calm the tempered waters, let someone start crying, and you will find many ears standing erect, ready to listen, let there be a visitor lost, and many knights will rise to make the person comfortable and let there be a funeral and you get to see many new faces ready to help. What I love, love and love most is the fact that most people you don’t know from Adam in Ghana ask for your greetings even if you forget to give it. Thus, once you get out there, no matter how lonely you are, you can still talk to someone and feel among. Why won’t I love Ghana?

2. I love Ghana because everyone has a voice. Literates and illiterates alike have voices. Listen to a radio station discussing politics and you’ll hear many opinions, ones which can make you laugh your heart out and ones which will make you think. A public official whose good clothes have been peeled off by corruption will have supporters ready to fight for him and will have enemies ready to crucify him. The tug of war sometimes gets so clumsy that those on the fence can find the comedy more humorous than the plays of Shakespeare. And the hot waters become cool as soon as some days travel on the matter. Ghana! Why won’t I love Ghana?

3. I love Ghana because there is mostly sunlight and I love the sun. There is no snow to lock humans in, though there are enough gutter buildings which help in flooding and disaster, I pray for the likes of Oko in all regions.

4. I love Ghana because of our food. You get banku and okra soup, get fufu and palmnut soup with prekese, get ampesi and “nkontontoriwa” groundings, even porridge with “whintia, pepre etc”. Where else can you face the wall and get a belly full? Get a prepared drink in soobolo which is purported to be medicinal? And ei, can I leave out tuozaafi and ayoyo or bra soup? Please, I love my Ghana because even soups can be married to be in one consumption; “abenkatekonto”. I love Ghana.

5. I love Ghana because of our peace. There are no shivers here; shivers of ebola, bokoharam (my sympathies to affected states), and even where political tensions rise, the court is left to decide and its rulings are respected. Many are those who will disagree but never end up fighting. Well, we do have a few ethnic and chieftaincy squabbles, but we are generally a peace loving nation. We play with our cultural supremacies but never end up in war. I love Ghana. Yes, this is my homeland, we have issues but home is where the heart is, and Ghana is my home.

I went with some geography students of Tamale Senior High school on a tour to the Buabeng Fiema Monkey Sanctuary and proceeded to the Kintampo Waterfalls. Knowing Ghana, my homeland, is now a passion, so I decided to share our experience.

The Buabeng Fiema Road from Kintampo

The road to Buabeng Fiema from Kintampo was 32km and only some 300m of that road was tarred. The dust was unbearable, some pot-holes; unbelievable, but we plied through safe and sound.

HISTORY OF THE BUABENG FIEMA MONKEY SANCTUARY

In the year 1827, some people went to settle in Buabeng Fiema. There was a hunter among them. One day, the hunter who was called Nana Ampong decided to go to the river side to fetch water. On reaching the river bank, he found a fetish covered with white cloth, flanked by the white and black colobus and mona monkeys. When the monkeys saw the hunter with his gun, they fled, leaving the fetish. The hunter decided to take the fetish home. When they woke up the next morning, they found four monkeys in the village. They consulted an oracle and the oracle told them that the monkeys were the children of the oracle, so if they liked the monkeys and could live with them without any problem, they could keep the fetish but if they could not live with them, then they should take the oracle back to where it was found.

The settlers liked the fetish and the monkeys because they met them in Buabeng Fiema when they went to settle there, so opted to keep it and live in harmony with the monkeys. The fetish told them that anyone who caused any harm to any of the monkeys would face the anger of the fetish by dying. The settlers agreed. The oracle also told them that if any of the monkeys died, they should bury them like humans or else, the fetish gods will deal with them. The settlers obeyed and prepared sizeable coffins for the burial of dead monkeys and the fetish priest of the village poured libation to go with the burial. (Still a ritual)

Starting the journey into the Buabeng Fiema Monkey Sanctuary

If the monkeys get sick or injured, they have their own medications in their sanctuary (which is the forest in which they live) but no one has been able to get their medications. If they realize they are going to die, they go to the village or to a public place and die, so they can be found for burial.

Being enlightened on the history of the sanctuary by our tour guide; Edmund.

The monkeys live in groups and every group has its leader. In the group of the mona monkeys, the head of the group, who is always the biggest, is the only one allowed to have sex with all the females in the group. If another male tries it, the leader beats it to a pulp. So if a male wants its freedom, it needs to form its own group. The groups get their territories marked so no other group can evade, if there is an evasion, there will be a terrible war. Funny enough, the mona monkeys play with the black and white colobus monkey without friction. The monkeys go to the village after the villagers go to farm to steal their foods, so villagers who are not careful will have no food in their houses upon their return from farm. No monkey can be hurt or given any form of punishment because any harm on any of the monkeys is tantamount to death. (At this point, I asked if it is really true that one might die if he or she harms a monkey.) To this, he replied: “Ei madam, please don’t doubt this, when I was in class four, the Salvation Army Church members defied the gods and killed the monkeys for their meet claiming the words of the gods were superstitions, they died painful deaths until their extinction. So the villagers learnt their lessons” The guide, Mr. Edmund, cautioned that noise will scare the monkeys off, so tourists just needed bananas or other foods, extend them to the monkeys and they would come and take them, granting tourists time to take pictures.

The sanctuarinarians, roaming in the wild, a mona monkeyA black and white colobus; known to be less friendly because it thinks humans are to be feared

There are other animals in the sanctuary, but the monkeys have a larger population, they may be over 3000 monkeys now, they were counted more than five years ago and were about 2000 monkeys. Since the mona monkeys deliver every five months, and the black and white colobus deliver every two years, their population has surely increased.There are snakes but mangoose are also many in the sanctuary, since they feed on snakes, the snakes are not many in the sanctuary. Hunting in the Sanctuary is forbidden. So even if a tree falls, it is left to rot. There are trees like the ficus tree, which is a parasitic kind of tree, it eats up an existing tree and replaces it by planting its root and eventually plants its root from the top into the soil. THE MONKEY CEMETERY

There are two signboards in the cemetery; Madam Afia Boahene and Nana Kwaku Amponsah, but the one who discovered the fetish and monkeys was called Nana Ampong. Madam Afia Boahene was a virgin who helped the village to communicate with the fetish any time there was going to be a disaster. The fetish told her to warn the village, they also told her what the village needed to do to counter the attack. So the then priest, who was Nana Amponsah, prayed to counter it. Madam Afia Boahene died at the age of 120 and no virgin has been found to replace her. Now, whenever there is going to be a calamity, the monkeys cry deep into the night for seven days. Mostly, this cry means a chief of the two surrounding villages is going to die. The unfortunate thing is that, nothing can be done to reverse this as no one hears the voice of the fetish. The three people; Nana Ampong, Nana Amponsah and Madam Afia Boahene were all buried at the Monkey Cemetery because they are all considered the children of the fetish. I have to add that, there is also another story of a king and his men going to war leaving only women and children in the village. Fearing they may come to harm, he turned them into monkeys, hoping to come back and turn them back into beings. Unfortunately for them, they all perished leaving the human monkeys to live in the Monkey Sanctuary.

The Buabeng Fiema Village

We left the Buabeng Fiema Monkey Sanctuary at 1pm for the Kintampo Waterfalls.

HISTORY OF THE KINTAMPO WATERFALLS

It was discovered in the 18th century by a roaming hunter called Nana Ankomah who was the first formal chief of the area. He kept mute about it and visited the place with his family. During the colonial era, a British colonial doctor called Dr. Saunders also found the waterfalls so decided to develop it and make it known to all. The place was named after him and so was called the Dr. Saunder’s Waterfalls. Shortly after independence, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah also took over and built some houses there. Since, Dr. Saunders was no more, he changed the name from Dr. Saunders to Dr. Kwame Nkrumah Waterfalls. After the overthrow of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the buildings he had became idle. In 1992, the place went under the Ghana Tourist Board who decided to change the name because Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was no more. They chose to name it after the town, hence, the Kintampo Waterfalls.

The first stage of the falls.The second stage of the Kintampo Waterfalls

There are three stages of the waterfalls. The first, second and last stage where tourists can swim.

Descending the 152 staircase to the third stage of the Kintampo waterfallsThe third stage of the Kintampo Waterfalls

Stage one is the lower fall, stage two is the normal stream water and stage three is the only place one is allowed to swim. In stage three, one can fall easily because the place is very slippery. Females in their menstrual cycle are not allowed to swim.